Hi I was wondering if anyone could give me any advice on identifying the styles of differant composers. For example how would you know from listening to a piece that it was by Mozart.

The trite answer is "because it sounds like Mozart" but that begs the question "yes, but why?"

Why do you recognise people when you see them? You don't consciously analyse the facial structure, the skin texture, the hair style, the body shape etc. You see the Queen and you say to yourself "Oh look, it's the Queen". You recognise the pattern without analysing it. You might also say about another person, "That person looks just like the Queen" because you've recognised a similarity but also recognised that it's not a perfect match (e.g. I spent last week working with someone who was a dead ringer for Alistair McGowan, which given Alistair McGowans profession is somewhat ironic).

I think it's the same with music - you recognise a style, often subconsciously, by recognising the patterns that go with that style (assuming you don't actually recognise the specific piece). Once you have the general style you will often find that a lot of composers from the same period will have very similar styles. Personally I often recognise the period of an unknown piece (boroque, classical, modern, etc.) long before I will guess the actual composer.

Then again, even experts get it wrong sometimes. I believe (no doubt someone will correct me!) that there is a Symphony which, for many years, was thought to have been one of the first written by WA Mozart when he was a small boy (of about 6). Painstaking academic research, including "stylistic analysis" subsequently showed that, although a manuscript in WAM's handwriting existed, the piece was actually written by JC Bach. Allegedly the piece was given to the young Mozart as a transcription excersise by JCB when JCB was court composer in London and WAM in London for a few months whilst being toured around Europe as the child genius he was: Like I said, it's not always easy!

^ wot he said

If you listen to a lot of music, you will "absorb" and eventually recognise different styles, in the same way that most teenagers can recognise the different styles of pop musicians, because they listen to it constantly. It's much the same with classical music

I imagine if you've studied music, you can identify the various technical differences between composers - but even if, like me, you haven't studied it, you can still often recognise different styles/composers simply because you've been listening to it for years.

And to some extent it's like fashion as well - music from the 20th century is just as different from the music of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries as the clothing is. Although again just like retro fashion, you sometimes get echoes of a previous era in the music of a later period. We're more familiar with historical fashions because we see historical programmes on television and we know which era they're from. But if you're familiar enough with the subject - whether it's fashion, music, architecture, cars, furniture, porcelain, interior or garden design etc...., you would easily be able to recognise which era it was from, and in some cases who was responsible for designing/manufacturing (or composing) it, because you've seen so much of it. Don't know if that makes sense!